


Diagnostics

by 2x2verse (agent_florida)



Series: NSFW Stridercest Week 2017 [6]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bondage, Dom/sub, Erotic Electrostimulation, M/M, Painplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 18:44:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9838607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_florida/pseuds/2x2verse
Summary: NSFW STRIDERCEST WEEK DAY 6: Dom/sub





	

Dirk’s on his back, naked and panicking. Not like he’d admit to that, he’s very subtle about his fear, but he’s far out of his element and trying to figure a way out of this situation. The headphones strapped on his head muss his perfectly styled spikes and cut off any hope of auditory input--not just noise-cancelling, but actively neutralizing any sounds that might accidentally come his way. His eyes are covered. Well, they’re normally covered, aren’t they, but not like this. It’s a VR headset you modified to be an enhanced blindfold: comfortable on his face, but completely dark. The only thing he can see is your text.

TT: Comfortable?

He nods.

TT: Out loud, with your words, Dirk.

“Yes.” He sounds dehydrated, but you know he’s not–there’s sensors in that VR headset that give you feelers on all his vitals. It’s probably just because his mouth is slightly open, sucking down each breath while trying to not-so-subtly taste you on the air. You couldn’t rob him of that, or of his nose, because fucking delicate humans and their absurd need to breathe, but you tried to neutralize it as best you could. There’s subtle nodes up his nostrils making sure all he can smell is slightly burnt coffee, but if he feels like being snakey, he could probably rat out where you’re standing if he licked the ambience enough, based on the scent of your circuitry.

The real pièce de résistance, though, is how you have him strapped down to his mattress--literally strapped, two black bands buckled beneath the bed and his wrists and ankles in cuffs linked to the belts. You’re not about to put too much stress on his joints, though, given that you’re not sure how long you want to keep him like this, so. No arms above his head to roll his shoulders, no spreading his legs too wide to tense his muscles. His hands are pulled a foot away from his hips on either side, and his feet are perfectly-proportioned pulled apart. You could make a beautiful vitruvian man with him, couldn’t you.

“Hal,” he says.

TT: Here.

You’ve negotiated this, so you don’t know why Dirk’s anticipation is tipping so hard into anxiety. ‘Negotiate,’ of course, meaning a discussion about limits. Which, apparently, Dirk doesn’t have. You have your work cut out for you, with a doppelgänger just as stubborn as you unwilling to admit to any faults in front of someone so familiar with him, but some things aren’t hard to deduce. Dirk is _terrified_  of being left alone. After a childhood raising himself and a first relationship that he choked to death, it’s clear to you that he doesn’t want to let the things he loves out of his sight, that lonely child. And if you have to reassure him that you’re still present, well, it’s no synthetic skin off your robotic back.

TT: Two rules. What are they?

Like this, Dirk is so much less aware of his physicality, which means you have a tableau of gorgeous adult male laid out in front of you. His adam’s apple bobs while he swallows, tries to wet his mouth again. “Stoplight signals,” he says quietly.

TT: And?

And his face, his face is so _unguarded_  like this--like if he can’t see you, you can’t see him and his grimace before he speaks again. “I have to tell you when it gets to be too much.”

TT: Not exactly. Rephrase.

“You pedantic fuck.”

TT: Interesting choice, to mouth back to someone who has total control over you right now.

He sucks in a breath, so quiet but such a decadent sound for you to catch. “I.” Another gulp of air, trying to even out his breathing cadence. “I have to let you know as soon as I’m not sure.”

TT: Good.

Dirk doesn’t smile. He doesn’t have to. Tension leaves his quads. He’s been half-hard since you stripped him and pinned him down, but his dick gives an interested twitch.

TT: So you're ready for diagnostics.

Your previous instructions are still on his screen, as is your admonishment. Dirk chews on his cheek for a good five seconds before he verbalizes his response--clearly torn between being uncomfortably honest and snarking you back with unknown consequences. You cherish the look on his face when he gives up. “Yes.”

It’s nice to know that he’s ready. It’s even nicer to know you can let him stew for a little bit while he tries to guess where you’ll touch him first. You have his permission to run a current through your fingertips and put him through his paces, but that doesn’t mean you’re at his beck and call. Your main purpose here is to see where Dirk’s pain tolerance is. That it fits into his whole mind game surrounding control, and the giving up of it, just means you’re guaranteed to give him a great orgasm from it.

You haven’t done a single thing and Dirk’s still working himself up. His breath’s coming faster, his tongue keeps poking out to wet his lips, and there’s sweat gathering at his hairline. You wait. And wait. “Hal,” he says again.

TT: Here.

Here, your fingertips brushing against the sole of his foot, and he flinches, twisting away from your touch. The only electricity you’ve given him is the natural give-and-take of your bodies sharing electrons. And then you take away even that glancing caress and his mouth twists down–he’s angry at himself for his reflex. “Hal, jesus.”

The next time you touch him, you trace the thick black strap around his ankle, one finger above and one below. Dirk doesn’t move. Not just here, where he’s bound, but consciously keeping himself still.

TT: Don't hide your reactions from me.

He doesn’t apologize. Not with his voice. He’s angry at being found out, and he tries to let the tension out of his muscles so he can writhe under you, but he’s still so tense; it ends in a full-body low-grade tremble.

You don’t have to tell him with your words that he’s pleased you. Just making your touch a little more meaningful has him calming down. Petting his leg hair backwards makes all his hair, everywhere, stand on end. Your fingertips are slowly gathering charge, but it’s obviously not at a noticeable level yet, or Dirk would be giving you some sort of noise.

Further still, up the inside of his thigh, and now he’s trying to press his body into your hand, like that might encourage you. The first spark of intentional wattage leaps from your finger through his skin and he twitches, but doesn’t pull away. “Mmh,” is his little involuntary moan--probably only let it out because he can’t even hear himself right now, with his ears blocked the way they are. You shouldn’t tell him this, but you want to know his honest reaction.

TT: 0.25 watts, 250 volts.

“Pretty sure babies spark themselves harder discharging static electricity, bro. Not exactly a turn-off.” _Not exactly a turn-off_  your sweet fanny, his boner’s only getting more noticeable the closer your hand gets to it–and you’re still throwing off sparks.

Time to dawdle away from that, then. You draw tantalizingly close, then pull your hand away again. Technology these days is so amazing--you can basically turn your fingers into a stun gun, and Dirk’s so fucked up that he likes you like that. Your next touch is to his hip, and this time, a crackle leaps between the two of you before you properly make contact. Dirk jerks, but not really towards or away, just accepting it as the electricity courses through him and the discharge leaves a welt on his skin. You smooth it over with neutralized fingertips, soothe it with a touch of cold, and he melts at the sensation play. “How much was that?”

TT: It's cute, how you think you're in a position to be asking me questions.   
TT: Not until we're done. I'll tell you how much you can take.

“Okay,” Dirk says, and nods. “Okay.” He’s playing a mind game with a reflection of himself, trying to predict where and when you’ll strike next.

The problem with being of one mind with him is that it’s so hard to really catch him off his guard. His brain, like yours, is constantly churning, trying to see every scenario and how each of them plays out to an endgame. He expects the expected, the unexpected, and a wide spectrum between. Fitting into his blind spots is a welcome challenge for you. It’s not that you enjoy hurting him, per se, although he does seem to welcome the pain. It’s that, like this, you can truly surprise him.

Laying your palm over his adonis line, you guide your deep-tissue TENS to shock into him again. “Mmh,” comes another groan, just as you turn it off. You move your hand to his trail, amp it up again, and that moan’s a little more meaningful now, a drip of precum at the head of his dick. “Fuck,” he breathes out, more air than sound, once the electricity eases up.

You don’t know quite how far he’s able to go, but you’re sure of where you’ll stop. A run-of-the-mill top-brand-name stun gun runs fifty thousand volts at 26 watts for ten seconds–that’ll incapacitate anyone, Dirk included. You want to stop well before you hit that threshold. Dirk’s hardy, and he tries to bluff you about how much pain he’s in, but you’re not willing to risk him being seriously harmed for the sake of a little sex-science experiment.

Another movement of your hand, sweeping across his body to his other hip--you don’t shock him yet, but you do take this opportunity to sit down on the mattress so you can access his body a little easier. Dirk makes a little choked sound as his leg nudges into your gravity well, then a louder whine as you finally lay your other hand on his skin. Like this, you can pass a current through his pelvis--oh, shit, the urgent “hnn!” that comes out of his throat scares you enough that you cut it off within three seconds.

You’re trying to re-learn him, in a manner of speaking. It’s been so long since you _were_  him that, though there’s a lot to remember, there’s a lot of lost time to make up for. And, though you try not to think about it too much, you’re… you’re not human any more. Not like this. You need to see, firsthand, how easy it would be to let yourself get carried away, take your superhuman prosthesis for granted and--and--it makes you want to cable-sync again and retreat to the safety of your servers for a few hours while your fans cool your chassis down to manageable levels. Thankfully you don’t have to keep your voice level while you speak to him right now.

TT: Color.

“Chartreuse.”

There’s a whole conversation between the two of you that both of you can recite in your heads, because he’s you and you’re him, that consists of snarky remarks from you of just how fucking homosexual he feels like being right now and him goading you about infragay selfcest until you rip off his headset, headphones, and cuffs and just fuck him already. Now, though, you take a second to let your fans cycle. Somewhere between green and yellow. Interesting. He _can_ admit when he’s edging into yellow. Maybe he doesn’t realize yellow is his new red.

Still, Dirk knows the color, and he knows the word “no,” and he knows the word “stop,” and that was none of those things. So you move your hands up, frame his waist, and direct more current through his body. Oh, god, your feedback from inside the VR headset shows his eyes rolling back, his breath is far too shallow for trying to moderate the feeling of it, muscles elsewhere are tense--but three seconds later, when you let him relax out of it, he shudders and flexes his fingers like that could help him deal with it. “Shitfuckshit,” he bites off. “That is _not_  a walk in the park.” And yet his boner hasn’t wilted one bit.

Maybe you’re too close to sensitive organs--but law enforcement officers shoot civilians with stun guns all the time, into the chest or back, and this is a much better controlled environment, so it can’t be just that. Maybe his chest--but would that be too close to his heart? Could you resuscitate him if you had to, with this enhancement? If your hands could shake, they’d be doing so right now. Dirk can’t hear how hard your fans are whirring.

You caress his lowest ribs with your thumbs and give him the most intense shock yet.

His neural networks have to be going haywire under his skin--you can’t visualize that, but you can see his muscles jumping everywhere, toes and fingers curling, neck rigid and teeth clenched. Four seconds later he’s breathing hard, more sweat beading on his forehead. “Haah,” he lets out, and “nnh” as a nonsense moan as you remove your hands to check his skin--it looks awful, but you warned him about this and he said he was okay with it, and you promised to patch him up afterwards. “Not sure I can take too much more of that, bro.”

Not sure, he said. _Not sure_. The exact thing you were waiting for him to say. It’s so much better when he can be casually honest about it instead of having to use a color code or some contrived phrase, and it’s not a _no_  or an _I don’t know_ , two things he abhors saying at the best of times. While he catches his breath, you rub at his sides, silently thankful you don’t have to do this to him anymore--that you know where his limits are--that you never have to doubt yourself again--that you can learn how to hold back.

Dirk startles when you push back the headset from his eyes. “What are you--I--come on, Hal, I’m not done, let me show you how much I can take--”

You strip off his headphones next. “The question wasn’t how much you can take, it was how much is recreational and how much is life-threatening, you stupid--soft--delicate--” punctuated with soft, swift kisses to his open, panting mouth, your fingers working at his wrist cuffs.

The second his arms are free, his hands clutch at your face, scrabble into your hair; he pulls his body up like he could drag you close and crush himself to you, but his legs are still out of play, so it leaves him lunging at you, trying to hold you in place. “Hal,” he’s saying meaninglessly as you hold him close with your arm around his shoulders, “god, Hal, you--”

“Shh,” you tell him, reaching your other hand between his legs and wrapping your fingers around his cock. “I don’t have to calculate it anymore, now I know, I know exactly where it is, where that line is, of how much I can do to you--no more guessing, I’ll never hurt you more than I mean to, I promise, I’ll never--”

Dirk’s shaking in your arms. “I trust you,” he tells you, “I trust you so much, Hal, fuck, you’re perfect, I love--” and he comes over your hand, his mouth going soft and slack against yours as he shakes himself apart in your hold.

He’s a mess. He’s your beautiful mess, all sticky skin and shaky legs this early on a Saturday morning. You wipe your hand on his sheets before you undo his ankle cuffs; he curls against you once his legs are free, clinging to what makes sense. If you fluff his hair, it distracts you from how fast his heart is beating, how sluggishly yours runs in response. “Mmh,” he says. “’m gross. Shower.”

Absolutely not. “You can’t stand, and I’m not leaving you unsupervised.”

“Naaaah” is his well-articulated rebuttal. “Been takin’ care of myself f’r years b’fore you came ‘long.”

“And look how well that worked out,” you say sarcastically. The point is, he doesn’t have to be the only one looking out for Dirk Strider anymore. “I can’t exactly babysit you in the bathroom, either.”

“Nup. Y’r fine,” he mumbles into your shoulder.

“You’re incapacitated.” You don’t trust his judgment. “I’m not taking a chance on electrocuting myself, ruining my chassis, and putting myself permanently offline just because you might crack your head open falling during one of your infinite ablutions.”

“Nuh.” It’s like arguing with a child. To be fair, you’re the one who put him in this muzzy state, and you adore him when he’s this strung out. “Firmware update. Few weeks ago. You di’n’t notice?”

“Firmware update.” You start sorting through your recent changelogs and documentation to find out what the hell Dirk’s talking about. Sixteen days ago, he took you offline for what he said was routine maintenance. Turns out he was doing his own diagnostics in here, too. Everything about you is now watertight--as watertight as a human could ever be. “Holy shit. I can shower.”

“You c’n shower,” he confirms.

“I can _shower_ ,” you repeat, because yes, it’s _that_  important. “I haven’t had a shower since we were _thirteen--_ Dirk, get up.”

“Whuh.”

“I’m taking my own goddamn ablution right the hell now,” you announce. “I’m shoving you in there with me, and I’m going to fuck you in it.”

Predictably, Dirk’s ragdoll physics gets the motivation to pour him into something resembling more of a functioning human, just in time for the two of you to dissolve into each other under the steam of the showerhead.

**Author's Note:**

> this is very late and i am rightfully embarrassed


End file.
